Swap keys, a conversation with Luz Broto

“Meet a local/visitor. Swap a copy of your house key”. With this brief set of instructions, this suggestion, this invitation, Luz Broto continues a series of actions that she has carried out in different cities: Put oneself in the place of the other.

The first took place in 2014. Returning to her former high school, the artist made a proposition to seventy school students: that every day, for seventy days, they go home from school to a different person’s life – to someone else’s parents, siblings, pets and pyjamas. In the context of Prishtina, where people still face insurmountable obstacles to travel, the swapping of keys between locals and visitors has many layers.

While the exchange proposed by the artist reveals inequalities between citizens, it is nevertheless a sign of trust and future commitment. It affirms a mutual faith in the coming dismantling of the borders that isolate Kosovo. And in the meantime, it helps to open the invisible borders between strangers. The key is a radical souvenir to be kept forever.

Participant Luz Bruto will host an open conversation about her intervention at the Centre for Narrative Practice on Sunday the 24th of July from 17.00-18.30.